


Sunset Blooms

by hexterah



Category: BioShock
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 12:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5870011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexterah/pseuds/hexterah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry Holton wonders if the girl at Eve's Garden he always looks forward to catching a glimpse of on Friday nights is actually looking back at him. (She is.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunset Blooms

**Author's Note:**

> The last of three BioShock fanfictions I wrote all in a row. I was always so interested in what was going on in Rapture when the city was in full swing and I thought I would try to explore that some. This one is kind of happier compared to the other two, but I'm pretty sure all these characters either died or became splicers anyways SO **:(((((**
> 
> Written: 03/01/2008

To him, she was an example of hope and strength. A light in the dark. A breath of fresh air. A tiny sprinkle of purple flowers in the middle of a gray wasteland. To him, she was the sun.

And they hadn't even properly introduced themselves to each other until after they had sex.

She worked at Eve's Garden, some nights as a dancer and some as a waitress. He worked down at the wharf, for Fontaine at the fisheries in the day and for Bill McDonough at the tavern at night. Some days, if he was lucky, he got to put in some time at McCracken Crabs -- but that was only if he was lucky. One major constant he always had at his job though was the fact that he would deliver wine and beer to Eve's Garden every Friday night. 

And he would see her there, smiling and laughing. She would be on stage either dancing by herself in a gown of feathers or maybe dancing backup for Jasmine Jolene. Sometimes she was on the floor carrying trays of drinks or cigarettes. But his eyes would always manage to find her. 

He never expected her to look back at him, or even to acknowledge him. He was just a poor guy from Apollo Square who would come in with a cart of booze, dressed in a pair of brown pants, old boots and a dirty white shirt almost buttoned to the top with the sleeves rolled up. Sometimes he would have suspenders on too, but it was usually just the same old look. His hair was a rich shade of black and shoulder-length, usually pulled back in a loose tie and occasionally hidden under a brown pageboy cap. Same outfit, same job and same outlook on life for six years in a row -- ever since he was fourteen.

One night though, everything changed. She began to notice him.

He would cart in the delivery and pass by the bartender to stock it, peering over the counter to find her. One night he saw her peek around the curtain backstage to catch a glimpse of him and another night she made sure she came to get an order while he was behind the bar stocking. When she was standing there, he could only blush slightly and look away, biting his lip. 

The bartender would occasionally catch him staring and scold him for it. One night when she was on stage the bartender even gave him a nice smack in the back of the head. "You're paid to deliver the goods and get out, boy, not to stare at the girls."

"Sorry," he had responded, quickly finishing the job and leaving.

He didn't know her eyes had followed him out. He also didn't know that she had been worrying about the knot that was forming on the back of his head from the bartender's smack.

He came back the week after that and noticed she was serving that night. That was the night she brushed right past him, full tray in her left hand and someone's empty wine glass in the other.

"Excuse me," she whispered as she went by, squeezing between him and the table he was passing.

"Mmmhmm." It was all he could manage to respond with, especially after he caught her eyes. They were light brown surrounded by long pale lashes and the way they lit up when the fabric of their clothing rustled against each other's made his heart hitch in his chest. It took him longer than normal to stock the delivery that Friday because he was too busy daydreaming.

He was surprised she even noticed him. Most of the citizens spending time in Fort Frolic seemed to ignore people like him, the dirty lower class who pretty much did all their work for them. They were nonexistent in Rapture. They worked the machine and got no recognition for it. Just a measly salary to barely live by and a few laughs with a stray injection of EVE and old plasmids here and there. It was no wonder most of his acquaintances were turning to drugs and other not very appealing hobbies.

Weeks went by like this; a glance here, a blush there -- once or twice he swore she even winked at him. Was this some sort of joke or something? Were her rich kid friends getting her to play a big prank on the dummy from the wharf?

One night he came in late with the cart, his eyes darting to the bartender as he entered.

"It's about time, kid."

"My apologies, sir. Problems at the tavern."

"Of course," the bartender replied in a bored sort of tone. "Grant!" He called out after that.

There was a questioning grunt from somewhere else in the establishment.

"I'm out of here for the night." The man began to shift towards the voice, weaving in and out of tables and stopping at the entrance to the hallway which contained the dressing rooms. "The stocker's here with the Friday shipment. You can lock up after he leaves, yeah?"

He had watched the bartender walk away and began to stock the bottles under the counter, like he did every week. Past the bar he could hear the 'tender leaving and someone else shuffling around. Most likely that Grant fellow or whoever it was.

"Hi there."

He jumped and smacked the back of his head on the underside of the counter in the exact place the bartender had hit it a few weeks earlier.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" 

With those words, the inflection and the tone, he had realized that the Grant fellow was most definitely female. And when she vaulted the bar and helped him out from under it, he realized that it was the same one he had been eyeing for weeks. She tried to apologize again, but he waved his free hand in her face -- the other clamped over the new bump on the back of his head.

"It's fine, it's okay."

She opened her mouth to say something else but nothing seemed to come out and her lips just ended up working around soundless words. The pinks and purples of the lights around them cast a comforting glow on her face and he couldn't find any way to tear his eyes from hers. Weeks and weeks of staring and coy smiles and now they could talk with no interruptions -- but neither of them could find anything to say. 

She reached up to him, the palms of her hands resting on his chest and sneaking to either side, where her fingers toyed with his suspenders. He had to resist the urge to jump again. A woman hadn't put her hands on him in years. Emily Chambers smacked him square across the face a few years before, for looking at her the wrong way. His mother hugged him and ruffled his hair all the time before she died in 1955. But this, this was different.

He hadn't realized it but his own hands were on her shoulders, rubbing the silk of the robe she wore and twirling strands of thick, dark brown hair around his fingers. This is what he needed in his life. He needed companionship, he needed someone else, he needed _her_. Rapture had so many people in it and he had never found a single one he wanted to spend any time with, _not one_ , until this point. He desperately hoped she wasn't playing some sort of trick on him, although, why she would put herself through something like this for her or any friend's amusement was beyond him.

"I..."

Whatever he had planned to say was cut off by her lips pressed against his.

Joke on her part or not, he didn't hesitate with kissing her in return, reveling in the way her arms snaked around his neck and the way her curves felt under his calloused fingers. Moments later she pulled back, and stepped away from him for what he thought was going to be forever.

But he watched her round the bar and head to the front door of Eve's Garden, locking it from the inside and shooting him a sideways glance before retreating back towards the hallway she had come out of earlier. Before she disappeared into the corridor, she stopped herself with a hand on the door frame and turned to look at him once more. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were pursed slightly. She raised her eyebrows once and then vanished from sight.

This was wrong, there was something completely off about this. He kept repeating this in his head. But he couldn't stop himself from meandering back towards the dressing rooms, shoving chairs out of his path and knocking into tables on the way. His delivery was only half unpacked behind the bar, but it was forgotten for a good few hours after he followed her back behind the stage, a multitude of closed doors on either side of him.

One was open at the end of the hall and a soft blue light was seeping out of the entrance, which he found himself drawn towards. Once he had managed to make it to the door, he hesitated before peeking around the frame. She was standing by the chair in front of her vanity, her arms by her sides and her head tilted slightly. She motioned for him to come in and a few moments passed before he stepped into the dim dressing room.

He slammed the door behind him and in a matter of seconds she was in his arms and their lips were locked again. They stumbled around a bit before she ended up pulling him to the ground into a surprisingly cushy pile of dresses and costumes used while she was on the clock. He could feel the feathers of one of the costumes tickling his back as she snapped his suspenders and tugged his shirt off. His fingers went to the tie of her robe.

Joke or not, he was amazed at what he was doing. The first real deviation from his normal life in six years. And it was a _huge_ deviation. His mind wasn't anywhere near any thought at all of his normal life though. He had forgotten the delivery out by the bar; he had forgotten the yelling at the wharf and the arguing at the tavern. Nothing went through his mind concerning his barely there mattress he slept on every night or the thin, tasteless soup he ate for dinner. The smell of the dead sea life mixed with the stench of booze and the hushed whispers as smuggled goods were transported through the wharf -- it was all forgotten. And he definitely wasn't preoccupied with thoughts of his father screaming at him about what he was going to do for the rest of his life. 

His mind, along with his hands, were on _her_. This woman from Eve's Garden. He didn't know her favorite color, her hobbies, where she went after work -- he didn't know how she took her coffee, if she even drank it, or if she had any siblings. He didn't even know her _name_ , but now he knew what she was like in the middle of one of the most intimate and engaging acts humans could take part in.

A very pleasant introduction, in his humble opinion.

He felt her fingernails in his back one last time before she relaxed, tilting her head back and letting her face disappear into a mess of the satins and silks they were laying on. He watched her for a few moments, his lips upturning slightly at the way she had closed her eyes and was attempting to catch her breath. Once she opened her eyes and peered up to him, she smiled.

"Henry Holton," he was still hovering over her as he said this, still breathing heavily himself, the air displacing strands of dark brown from her forehead.

She laughed and it was a rich, lush sound that echoed in the small room. "Mae Grant."

"Good to meet ya, Mae." He felt a smile on his own face, which was flushed red. 

She nodded in agreement and then bit her lip, stifling back another laugh.

"What?" Henry's smile vanished and he figured this was where the big joke was revealed.

But it wasn't because there was nothing to reveal. It was no prank.

"Nothing, I just..." Mae blinked and Henry shifted, settling beside her and waiting for her to go on. "That was the craziest thing I've ever done." She turned her head to look at him. " _Ever_."

The grin returned to his lips. "Me too." He still couldn't believe what had just happened and with a mouthful of dry air, he blurted out his next question. "Why did you do it?"

"I don't know... I've always been drawn to you. You're unlike any other guy who has stepped foot in this hellhole. You're polite, you're a gentleman, you're _cute_."

"I'm also poor," he stated quickly, matter-of-factly, and almost angrily.

"Who gives a rat's ass?" She leaned her head up on her hand and shook it almost violently. "I'm sick of this class shit. Andrew Ryan brought us all down here to banish that kind of thinking and now we're right back to it."

Henry couldn't help but smile inwardly at her language. She had always appeared to be this unreachable, prim and proper female of the species -- upper class, mingled with all the rich boys and girls. But here she was -- naked, lying curled up beside him in a pile of wrinkled silk and cursing just as heavily as the guys down at the tavern. She was a breath of fresh air.

He reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Henry did it hesitantly though, thoughts of her suddenly being repulsed by him drifting through his mind. Mae responded only by nuzzling her cheek into his palm, which he took as a good sign. After that, she asked the same question of him.

"What about you, why did you do it?" 

"I've been doing the same thing for about six years now. Wake up, get dressed, head to the wharf to work for Fontaine, head to the tavern to work for McDonagh, make deliveries, go home, eat dinner, go to sleep." He turned on his side to face her and watched as she shivered and reached down, pulling her robe up over them to their waists like a blanket. She looked back to him and expected him to go on. He did, but only with a single sentence. "This was something different."

"That's the only reason? 'Cause you wanted something different?"

He chuckled. "No, of course not. I mean, I know this probably sounds really bad, but I've thought about you a lot the past few months. You're the only thing that's ever made me smile during the day. I would think about Friday when I'd get to deliver the booze to Eve's Garden. I always look forward to seeing you, just catching a glimpse of you or hearing your voice place a drink order. Hell, I've been at the wharf gutting fish and I'll start having stupid, childish fantasies about you."

"A lot of guys have told me that." She dropped her head from her hand and laid it down beside his, their noses only half a foot apart. "Know how many of them I've done _this_ with?"

Henry felt his heart lurch at the thought of the question she asked. "I... uh..."

"None." She smiled at one of his many random bouts of boyish innocence and shrugged. "All the girls here get that kind of stuff said to them all the time. You should hear what they say to Jasmine Jolene."

"So I'm just like all the other guys then?"

"No, that's not what I meant, Henry." She poked his chest with a red fingernail. "When _you_ said it just now, I actually felt a reaction to it. When _they_ say something like that it's just sort of unsettling."

"But I didn't say it to you until after all _this_ ," Henry waved a hand between then at their extravagant little mess of bare skin and costumes and discarded clothes.

"True." Mae's eyes lit up as she turned her gaze to the clear ceiling of the dressing room, her eyes following a small school of fish in the water beyond. "But there was always something different about you. You would apologize when you accidentally bumped into someone, whether it was me or not. You would always tilt your hat with a smile when you saw me, or passed any of the other ladies on the way in with your delivery. You never wolf whistled or yelled nasty things out there like all the others. You even opened the front door for me once a long time ago." She turned her head to look at him once more. "You probably don't remember that but that was when I first really noticed you."

"I remember that like it was yesterday."

In reality, it had been almost eight months since the night he held the door open for her and that night was when Mae realized that there were men in Rapture who weren't just rich, bitter and perverted. There was more out there in the city than what she was used to. And she wanted it. He was what she needed in her life. A gentleman who cared more about others than himself and his money. Someone she could talk to and laugh with.

Her face flushed a little when she realized she had been staring at him, absently studying the way his hair fell over his face and the way his eyes matched the color of the leaves on the trees of Arcadia. Mae tucked her hands under her cheek and curled up under the robe, drawing closer to him. She felt his hand on her side and dared to look back up to his face when he began tracing patterns on her skin.

"Where did this come from?"

She already knew what he was asking about when the question fell from his lips, but moved her head slightly to look anyways. Henry's weathered fingertips were dancing on an irregular-shaped bruise that was smeared across her left side. It wasn't too large, and was lightening from the dark blue-black it started as, but he still caught a glimpse of it in the soft cerulean light of the dressing room.

Inhaling deeply, she let out a shaky sigh. "His name is Gerald Winters."

"A regular here?"

"Sort of." She shuddered again and pulled the robe further up their bodies. "He was for awhile, then one night he asked me out on a date and after that, he basically tried to court me. We went out on a few dates. I didn't know what I was doing. I was young, he was my first boyfriend, and he was the man I thought I would end up marrying. I just settled for it."

Henry nodded, waiting for her to continue. His expression had darkened considerably once he found out the answer to his question about the origin of the bruise was a name.

"We were dating for a few months and one night when it had been particularly busy around here, I told him I was gonna be late for a dinner date. I was gonna help Jasmine and Alexander clean up a little around here. Gerald didn't like that. So when I got to the Kashmir Restaurant to meet him for dinner, we ate in silence and then as he was walking me home he got angry about the situation and..." She shrugged tiredly. "... he started yelling at me. Once I told him I had enough and was done with the whole thing, he threatened to tell my parents where I worked."

"Your parents don't know you work at Eve's Garden?"

"It's a big city, dollface." She delivered a lopsided grin. "Anyways, I'm twenty-one. I can make my own decisions about my life and work, thank you. They're too busy paying attention to themselves and their artistic visions as it is. They don't have time for me."

He nodded, mildly shocked that parents of the upper class were just as distant as the ones in the lower class.

"To make a long story short, he didn't want me leaving him or being with anyone else. So he..." She tilted her head up a tad, the satin rustling around her.

"He beat you for it."

Mae whispered an affirmative.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, laying on their backs next to each other and staring at the city outside. Mae even dozed off for a couple minutes with her head on Henry's chest at one point. They talked some more once she woke up, about their families, friends, their jobs, their lives in general. They shared laughs and stories about their memories from being small children on the surface. They were together in the dressing room for over four hours, under a silk robe and lying in a cushy pile of chiffons and feathers. It seemed like something so simple, but to Henry and Mae it seemed like the best thing in Rapture. It seemed like the best thing in the world.

Henry left early that morning, around five. He left after he finished unpacking the delivery, which Mae helped with, wrapped up in her robe once more. She snapped Henry's suspenders as he pulled the empty cart to the entrance of the Garden, and they both shared another giggle before standing at the door for a few moments staring at each other. He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek and she shifted so their lips met. Her cheeks had flushed slightly when she pulled back and then she rushed him out of the Garden so she could close up, a grin apparent on her face.

His breath caught in his throat as he exited the establishment out into Fort Frolic. He was worried that it would be the last time he ever saw her.

It wasn't.

Henry saw Mae many times after that. They went to McDonagh's Tavern together, they sat by the wharf, she took him to some of the shops and casinos at Fort Frolic. They got dirty looks occasionally, for mixing with each other's classes, depending on where they were. But they didn't care.

Late one Saturday, Henry wandered for a bit around Rapture before heading to Eve's Garden at closing time to pick Mae up. They were going to head to the Tea Garden together and eat a late night snack by the stream. He had picked a few of the flowers on the way through Arcadia and ended up with a handful of purple blooms to give to her when he arrived there to meet her after closing.

He found the door of Eve's cracked open when it already should've been locked and leaning towards the crack, he peeked in. Mae was standing there in a simple long skirt of gray and a white blouse buttoned to the neck. Her wavy bangs were parted to the side and her hair was down, the ends reaching the middle of her back. She appeared frustrated -- and that was when Henry heard a man's voice coming out of Eve's Garden.

"I brought you these and you don't even care?"

"I don't want your damn flowers!"

Henry quickly felt himself tense up and shifted his view through the crack in the door to a tall man standing a few feet away from Mae. He had broad shoulders and brown hair slicked back out of a tan face. The man was holding a huge vase of red roses and Henry could feel his own grip tightening around the small batch of purple flowers he had picked for her. Shifting, the man moved back across the large room, back towards the hallway leading to the dressing rooms.

"What are you doing?" Mae shrieked as the man moved farther into the corridor.

"I'm putting these in your dressing room."

"Gerald, I don't want them. I don't want you!" Mae followed after him and Henry strained to hear the words after that.

He was tempted to barge in and help her out with this guy, but he knew she probably wouldn't appreciate him pushing his way into her business like that. He trusted her.

"Get out! I don't want to see you ever again. We've already been through this!"

The man said something in return, his voice suddenly angry and rough -- Henry couldn't make out what it was though. There were a few more unintelligible verbal spars and then he heard the shattering of glass. 

And the shrill cry of a female.

Throwing the door open, Henry stormed into the main chamber of Eve's Garden and peered around, making sure there was no one else there besides him, Mae and the tall man. "Mae?"

The first to stride out of the corridor at the back was the man, who instantly eyed Henry with a narrowed and calculating gaze.

"What the hell are you doing here? Garden's closed."

"I know. I'm here to pick up my _girlfriend_."

As he said the last word, Mae stumbled out of the corridor behind the man and pushed him out of the way, passing him and rushing onto the main floor of the establishment. Henry saw a new bruise on her face, reaching from her jawline up to her ear. He was mildly surprised her jaw wasn't shattered. Her face was red and flushed and she looked highly irritated at the whole situation as she glanced back to Henry. Mae slowly began to shift past tables to stand behind Henry, away from the other man.

"Oh wait, is this the _Henry_ I've been hearing about from others? The one that you're hanging around with so much?"

"Henry Holton," he nodded solemnly, before Mae could answer, his adrenaline suddenly pumping. "You must be Gerald Winters."

A sly smile crossed the man's face and he shrugged his broad shoulders. "In the flesh."

"Well, Gerald, it's been nice meeting you. But if you'll excuse Mae and me now, we have a date to keep. So if you'll step out so she can lock up..."

Gerald tried his hardest not to scowl, but he couldn't help himself and a sneer crossed his face. "I don't think she's going anywhere with you, _Henry_."

He was shocked at what he was saying. He never fought before -- he had broken up a few barfights at the tavern, and a couple arguments at the wharf -- but he had never been in a fight himself. By the look in Gerald's eyes he felt like he was about to get into his first. His right hand still held the purple flowers while his left casually went to his back pocket. There was a small needle of EVE in there. He had it for months and months, always carried it around with him, and never figured he'd use it. He hoped the plasmids he had in his system still worked and would awaken if he injected the EVE. It had been a long time since an afternoon between jobs where he and his old friends would fiddle with some of the plasmids they had swiped from various places.

"Come on," Gerald casually moved towards the bar, his eyes never leaving Henry's. "I see the way you're looking at me. What are you gonna do about it?"

They stared at each other for what seemed like forever, Gerald leaning his back against the bar and Henry fingering the EVE needle in his back pocket. Only seconds had passed before Gerald was charging at him, throwing chairs out of his way and brandishing a corkscrew he had pulled out from behind the bar. Henry moved quick, stepping to the side and dropping the handful of flowers so he could roll to the floor and duck past Gerald. He went to crawl away on his hands and knees but Gerald had already turned around, his free hand clasped around Henry's ankle. Using his free foot to smash Gerald's cheek in with the scuffed and grimy bottom of his boot, he clambered to his feet and fished the needle from his back pocket.

Gerald recovered surprisingly quickly and saw what Henry had in his hand. "Goddamn poor people, stealing all the ADAM." Gerald lunged at him and grabbed him, the needle flying out of Henry's hand and landing on the stage. Winters wasted no time in tackling the slightly smaller man to the ground and stabbing the corkscrew into his left arm, where he would've injected the EVE, and then dragging it upwards towards Henry's elbow. With something between a growl and a scream, Henry's eyes rolled back into his head and he shut them against the pain, struggling against Gerald. 

He felt his head getting lighter as Gerald twisted the corkscrew into his muscle a bit before pulling it out. His whole body was growing weak and the only thing that brought him out of his daze was a scream and the sound of wood breaking. Forcing his eyes to snap open, Henry saw Mae standing over them with the top half of a broken chair and Gerald holding his back and slightly squirming far enough off of him for him to scramble out from under the man. The bloody corkscrew was on the floor by Henry's right hand and he was about to pick it before he heard his name.

"Henry! Catch!"

Turning towards the stage, he saw Mae on it, proud and gorgeous like he had seen her there so many nights before. What was left of the broken chair was beside her, dropped from her left hand, and her right had the EVE needle in it, which she tossed at him. He caught it with his right hand and didn't hesitate in jabbing it into his left wrist, wincing at the pain as the needle went straight into the wound Gerald had made with the corkscrew.

He could feel the plasmids running through his bloodstream now, awake and ready. He switched to the one he used to fiddle with on the wharf, and focusing on what was left of the chair Mae broke, he set it on fire. She gasped slightly and shifted away from it before looking back to him. He then switched to one of his few others and raised the chair in the air, making it drift over to hover above Gerald.

"Would you like to leave now, Gerald?" Henry asked this as calmly as he could, raising his voice only slightly over the crackling of the flaming wood and Winters' painful grunts.

The man shifted and opened his eyes, which looked more hungry and deranged than before, and locked his gaze right on Henry. "Not until I kill you." The words came out in a low rumble and he was already on his feet heading towards Henry. But it took much too long and Henry had already used his right hand to guide the burning wood crashing onto Gerald's back. It knocked the man to the ground again and set his clothing on fire, which he quickly tried to thrash around and put out.

Henry had no reaction to the smell of burning flesh. He had smelled worse down at the wharf. He noticed Mae was turned away from the scene though, on the other side of the room in between tables, her hands over her mouth. Within a good number of seconds Gerald had put the flames out and was shuffling to his feet, limping quickly towards the front door of Eve's Garden, which was still cracked open. He was coughing and choking out another empty threat.

"This isn't over, you little bastard."

"Oh, I think it is, Winters." Henry watched Gerald exit the Garden and stumble away from the front door and he waited until the charred rich boy was out of sight before he turned and stalked past Mae, leaving a trail of blood on his way back to her dressing room to clean himself up in her sink.

She stood in the middle of the floor, arms clasped around her midsection and her frame shuddering slightly. She felt the need to apologize to Henry, but she wasn't sure what for. She never wanted to drag him into something like that and to see him bleeding and bruised broke her heart.

Her eyes went to the thin string of blood that led from the front door back to the dressing rooms and she warily followed it, but not before leaning down to pick up something he had dropped on the way.

It was the first time Henry had ever seen Mae Grant cry.

She came back into the dressing room where he was seated at the vanity, the broken vase of roses laying next to his feet. He was holding a towel to the wound on his arm, red already soaking through the white cloth. Mae choked back a sob at the sight and the sound caught Henry's attention. His head snapped up and he looked at her reflection in the mirror ahead of him. His own image was a fairly disturbing sight in itself. He was a lot paler than normal, his jade eyes were dull and wide and his face was covered in a sheen of sweat. Strands of damp black hair hung limp around his face and his lips were thinned, his teeth gnawing on the inside of his cheek against the pain in his arm.

Their eyes met in the mirror and Mae ripped her gaze from his within moments, approaching him from behind. He stood to meet her in the middle of the room, turning towards her and instantly noticing what she had in her hand. 

It was the tiny bouquet of purple flowers he had picked for her in Arcadia and dropped in the middle of the Garden when Gerald had challenged him to a fight. They looked a little tired and worn, and were drooping a bit. But Mae shifted past him and put the stems in a tall glass of old drinking water that had been sitting on her vanity. "I'm sorry. I didn't... I didn't want you in the middle of that." She held back another fit of tears and sighed out a shaky breath. "And thank you, Henry," she finally whispered as her fingers sifted through the violet blooms.

After she turned back towards him, he nodded in response to her apology and her thanks and held his free arm to her. She stepped forward and pushed herself into it, burying her head into the crook of his neck and throwing her arms around his chest. Henry rubbed his hand up and down her back, which was shuddering with quiet sobs. She fell silent after a few moments and they stood there in the blue light of the dressing room, clinging to each other.

"I love you..." She finally whispered into his ear, breaking the silence.

"I love you too, Mae."

He answered with no hesitation and she responded to it by tightening her grasp on him. She was never planning on letting him go, and Henry Holton felt exactly the same way about her. He had watched her and dreamt about her, and once he found out she had been doing the same concerning him, he realized that he never wanted to be apart from her. She was the small patch of flowers in the middle of the wasteland. She was his sun and everything they had been through was her promise to him that she was never going to set.


End file.
